Ant Man Review: Small Hero, Big Surprise

You may have heard about some of the issues that Ant Man (directed by Peyton Reed) experienced during development, especially the infamous Edgar Wright situation involving Marvel drastically changing Wright’s passion project that was Ant Man. You may have been disappointed by the fact that Scott Lang is Ant Man in this film and not Hank Pym, and you may have heard that this is the lowest grossing Marvel movie since the mediocre Incredible Hulk. Cast your fears aside, because Ant Man is one of the best Marvel movies to date, featuring a charismatic lead, great special effects, excellent pacing, and great tie-ins to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Ant Man follows Scott Lang (played by Paul Rudd), a burglar just released from prison who is given an opportunity to become a superhero from Hank Pym (played by Michael Douglas). Lang’s goal is to stop an evil, generic business man, Darren Cross (played by Corey Stoll), from using his YellowJacket Suit (very similar to the Ant Man suit) for evil. To do this, Scott must become the Ant Man by wearing a suit that allows him to shrink and grow at will, but still keep all of his strength. As long as you can get past the plot hole of Ant Man having full force in a punch, but somehow riding on an ant and running up someone’s shoulder without killing the ant and knocking over the person, you’ll have a great time. Ant Man also came out at the perfect time, as everyone who saw Avengers: Age of Ultron knows, the film was a bit overstuffed and had too much going on in each shot. Ant Man does the exact opposite with a smaller scale story and much, much less going on in each shot, that helps Ant Man become the refreshing blockbuster that it is. Another great thing in Ant Man is that the stakes are higher than in most Marvel films, what I mean by that is in most Marvel movies we know that Marvel can’t kill Captain America, Iron Man, or Thor because Marvel financially relies on those characters, along with the rest of the Avengers. As shown by box office numbers, Ant Man is not a character that the MCU needs to go on financially, so it opened opportunities for real danger with the character. It is also worth mentioning that Ant Man is one of the most funny movies in the MCU, it doesn’t try as hard as Age of Ultron and the comedic timing is excellent. The only major issue with Ant Man is the villain. Marvel once again made a Marvel film with a 2-dimensional, generic business man who can do the same stuff as the hero kind of villain. Darren Cross as a character is a disappointment much like many other Marvel villains, of course, Loki and Ultron are exceptions. On the contrary to the villain, Marvel also had the great idea of letting Ant Man be more story driven than action driven, this worked very well for the character and will hopefully be done in more superhero movies. Overall, Ant Man is a spectacularly fun family blockbuster that fans of the Marvel Universe shouldn’t think twice about seeing. Ant Man was released on July 17, 2015 and is playing in all major movie theaters.